Man U fan to gangster to Hamlet ... the many faces of chameleon Paapa
THE actor Paapa Essiedu has been doing a jigsaw puzzle featuring a picture of the Manchester United team from 1990 — the year he was born.
Citing players such as Danny Wallace and Viv Anderson, he said it was a team ‘with iconic history’, which I agreed with, despite being an Arsenal man.
When I teased him about being a Londoner supporting a northern club, he laughed, before mock snarling down the phone line: ‘It’s in keeping with how I live my life anyway.
I’m a winner, so don’t judge me!’ As an actor, that’s certainly true. The 29-year-old has emerged as one of the most accomplished thespians of his generation, with a shapeshifting talent for transforming himself on stage and screen.
His roles have ranged from an acclaimed Hamlet for the Royal Shakespeare Company to a mob accountant in the terrific Gangs Of London thriller series on Sky.
He was in the midst of giving a powerful performance as a young
homeless man in Pass Over at the Kiln Theatre, directed by Indhu Rubasingham, when theatres went dark back in March.
But Essiedu tops all those roles with a superb, jaw-dropping study of Kwame, a fitness instructor and best friend of Arabella, a writer played by Michaela Coel, in her biting new series I May Destroy You, which starts on BBC 1 on June 8. The show is about an inter-connected group of sexually active and hardpartying friends in East London.
Arabella is raped after her cocktail is spiked. Later in the series, Kwame is also brutally sexually assaulted, by another man. The actor spoke to a lot of people who had been through different experiences in relation to sexual assault, to prepare for the role, and was surprised by what he found.
‘It’s not like you just become a recluse or you become terrified of everyone,’ he said. ‘There are a wide range of responses.’
East London-born Essiedu and
Coel were in the same year at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and have been friends ever since. Their families both hail from Ghana; and two years ago, when both were over there on holiday, they wound up hanging out together on Christmas Day. ‘So, a very close relationship,’ he told me, adding that it was actually ‘kind of strange’ that they’d not worked together until now.
‘It was interesting watching how that personal relationship merged into a professional one,’ he said. While Michaela never behaved like his ‘boss’ he found her ‘relentlessly no bulls***’. ‘She’s incredibly hard working and incredibly assured in the way she works, but not at the expense of anyone — friends or not.’
He loves the theatre and was happy at the Kiln but he fears for the less commericially viable venues. ‘I hope there’s support for them. I think we’re going to need them more than ever.’